


keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies

by Lennelle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 03, Alternate Season/Series 04, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Supernatural Summergen Fic Exchange 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 23:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20665730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lennelle/pseuds/Lennelle
Summary: If Dean had known then what he knows now, he never would have let Sam out of his sight.





	keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lady Kiki for this year's summergen exchange. I wrote this way back in May (I think?) and can now share it with the rest of you since reveals have been posted.

They’re several miles from Nowhere, North of Something-or-other, and the road is starting to look like a photograph, nothing but the road and the fields and the grey sky above, all of it unchanged within the last couple of hours. Dean keeps going in the hopes a sign might pop up; diner, motel, roadside lemonade stand. Anything at all.  
  
He’s run through half of the cassette tapes in the glove compartment and Sam dropped off to sleep about half an hour ago once _Stairway to Heaven_ came on, as usual. He’s a deadweight in the passenger seat, head dipped back over the seat, mouth hanging open wide enough to catch flies.  
  
The last bits of sunshine are swept away as the clouds above swell, black and heavy and ready to piss all over them. The first drop of rain on the windshield is the size of a grape, it hits the glass leaving a starburst of rainwater which immediately weeps down to the hood of the car.  
  
It doesn’t take long before the wipers are working overtime and Dean can barely see a thing through the torrent. He pulls off to the side of the road and turns down the stereo to listen to the rain hit the roof of the car like there’s a cavalry of horses up there. Still, Sam doesn’t so much as twitch in his sleep.  
  
Dean cuts the engine and Baby lets out one last grumble before she nods off, too. He feels oddly at peace here in the middle of nowhere, caught in a rainstorm. Just him and Sammy and Baby, as its been for so long. The world outside is blurred and wet, a couple of shades darker than it was only a moment ago. He can pretend they’re the only two people in the world, that there’s nothing else out there hiding in shadows and under rocks. His mind, as usual, jumps to thoughts of fire and brimstone and he feels suddenly hollowed out, like someone took a ladle to his insides and scooped everything out. Dean decides to wake Sammy up because he can’t stand sitting there with his own thoughts any longer.  
  
He pokes his index finger up Sam’s nostril which does the trick and Sam jerks upright, banging his head off the ceiling. He bats Dean’s hand away and rubs his offended nostril with the back of his hand, his face twisted with disgust. Dean grins; it’s in his blood as an older sibling to take pleasure at his little brother’s irritation.  
  
“Morning, sunshine,” he says. “It’s raining cats and dogs out there.”  
  
Sam raises his eyebrow as if to say _no shit, Sherlock_. He yawns wide enough that Dean can see even his wisdom teeth and he stretches his ridiculously long body out like a cat, finally settling low in his seat to peer out the window.  
  
“Want a beer?” Dean asks, leaning over to where the cooler sits in the back. Sam nods and the two of them crack open their cans, gas softly hissing upward. They sit quietly together, drinking until their cans are empty. Sam’s quick to go for a second. It’s not exactly a balanced meal but it’s better than nothing. They’ve had beer for dinner plenty of times; the Winchester Special.  
  
“Where’d ‘raining cats and dogs’ come from?” Dean wonders. “If it did rain cats and dogs, I’d sneeze my brains out. Well, cats, at least. There’ll probably be hundreds of them downstairs for me,” he adds with a hollow laugh.  
  
Despite not having said a word, Sam still manages to grow even more silent. He freezes, the beer can dents under his fingertips. He doesn’t look at Dean, instead he stares into the hole at the top of the can like he’s figuring out how to dive in there.  
  
“Sammy?” Dean says. He knew he’d fucked up the moment the words had left his mouth, but Dean’s never had much of a filter and Sam is particularly touchy right now what with…. Well, everything.  
  
Sam’s out the car so fast the rain barely manages to splash the passenger seat, and the door falls shut with a loud _crack_. Dean can see Sam’s blurred shape trudge through the rain to the other side of the road. A single car flies by, water spraying up in its wake, but Sam doesn’t seem to care about getting wet.  
  
Dean watches him down the last of his beer. Then, he just stands there, getting soaked. Dean waits another minute but Sam doesn’t budge so he hops out into the rain, getting soaked in seconds. There’s a puddle in the middle of the road the size of a pond and he circles around it until he meets Sam who’s soaked to the bone and shivering.  
  
“Sorry, man,” Dean bellows over the sheer volume of the rain. “Can we go back to the car now? If you catch pneumonia, it’ll be your own damn fault.”  
  
Sam finally looks at him and gives a small nod, water droplets shake themselves free from his hair. Before Dean can turn back to the car he’s pulled into Sam’s arms. He feels his little brother deflate and he rests his palm against the back of Sam’s head. They’re not huggers, usually, not unless someone is dying.  
  
Dean sighs.  
  
He’s got 61 days left.  
  


* * *

  
Bobby Singer wraps the two of them in a crushing embrace the moment he opens his front door. If he holds onto Dean a little while longer, no one says anything about it.  
  
“You two are wetter than damn dogs,” he says and tosses a towel from the kitchen bench at Dean. “Get yourselves dry and I’ll heat something up.”  
  
“Thanks, Bobby,” Dean replies. “I’m starving.”  
  
Sam trudges by without a word and Bobby and Dean listen to the sound of his heavy footsteps disappear up the stairs. One of the many phones on the kitchen wall cries out shrilly for attention and Bobby answers with a gruff, “Federal Bureau of Investigation. Agent Singer speaking.”  
  
Dean wanders into the study. It’s warm as the fire roars behind the desk, spitting embers up the chimney, letting out the occasional _crack_. He drops down onto the couch beneath the window, the rain is still spitting misty droplets against the glass and he wriggles out of his soaked leather jacket. Bobby is giving someone a stern talking to over the phone in the next room, the shower thunders upstairs, and Dean lets himself soak up the sheer normality of the situation.  
  
It almost feels like nothing has changed and for a split-second Dean can forget that he’s got a one-way ticket to Hell, train leaving in a little over two months. His mind wanders away again, as it usually does, back to flames and raw flesh and invisible teeth tearing his limbs out of their sockets.  
  
Ruby had said Hell changes you, twists your soul until it’s no longer human and all that’s left is black smoke. There are moments when he wishes he’d never made the deal. He wishes he didn’t have to live with the sands in his hourglass running down to the bottom. If he’d never gone down to the crossroads that night, he wouldn’t have to die.  
  
But then he remembers how Sam’s blood felt warm and wet on his hands, the weight of him as he went boneless in Dean’s arms, how empty Dean felt as Sam went stiff and cold. Knowing he never has to live with Sammy gone, Dean can almost make his peace with an eternity in Hell.  
  
“You want chilli?” Bobby’s voice drifts from the kitchen.  
  
Dean’s appetite has packed up its bags and walked out the door in the past few minutes but he answers, “sure.”  
  
He glances up to find Bobby’s beady eyes digging into him, reading Dean like one of his books. He clears his throat and taps his ladle against his palm like it’s a baseball bat. He opens his mouth to say something and Dean can see the gears in his head working along with his jaw, but he promptly presses his lips back together and gives a nod before disappearing back into the kitchen.  
  
Dean knows exactly what Bobby wanted to say, and he knows exactly what his reply would be:  
  
_How are you doing, Dean?_ Bobby would ask.  
  
_I’m fine,_ Dean would lie.  
  
Sam comes down the stairs, then, with damp hair and a clean shirt on. He smiles awkwardly, like Dean’s a stranger he’s passing on the street, and begins leafing through one of the monstrous books sitting on Bobby’s desk. His eyes dance with orange, catching the sparks from the fireplace. Sam’s usual rambling about this and that is painfully absent. Normally, he’d be talking Dean’s ear off about something less interesting than a rock erosion or some shit and Dean would tell him to shut up and they’d bicker for a few minutes before going out onto the porch for a beer.  
  
God, Dean wishes they could bicker right now. Anything would be better than this silence.  
  
“Dude,” Dean says. “Bobby’s making chilli.”  
  
Sam nods and Dean suspects he wasn’t listening at all as he continues to turn the pages in the book with more delicacy than hands that big should be capable of. Dean gets up and heads straight for the fridge to grab a beer or, better yet, something a little stronger because Sam’s silence gets on his nerves more than his chatter ever did.  
  
“Got some bread, too, if you want it,” Bobby offers without turning away from the stove.  
  
“Sure, whatever’s fine,” Dean says, crouched down in front of the fridge. He grabs a beer and twists off the cap.  
  
“How’s Sam?” Bobby asks, voice dropping a few decibels.  
  
“Fine,” Dean lies. At this point, lies come more naturally to him than breathing. Bobby raises an eyebrow that calls him out on his bullshit.  
  
“I don’t know how he is,” Dean admits, “I’d ask him but… you know.”  
  
Bobby scoffs and says, “You don’t need your brother to tell you how he is, you can see it all on his face. Just like I don’t need to ask you how you are.”  
  
“I’m _fine_, Bobby,” Dean insists.  
  
“Yeah and I just won the million-dollar jackpot,” Bobby retorts. “I swear to Christ; you boys will kill me before my liver rots.”  
  
“We’re dealing, okay?”  
  
“Oh yeah? How’s that going for you?”  
  
The two of them are startled by a knock on the door, but not the front door; Sam is standing in the open doorway with his knuckles resting against the frame. Sam holds out a piece of paper to Dean.  
  
_I’m not deaf, jackass. Hand me a beer._  
  
Dean does as he’s told and says, “We need to get you a bell or something, so we know you’re coming.”  
  
Sam gives him an unpleasant smile as if to say _ha ha, very funny_ and twists the top off his bottle. Dean can hear Sam’s voice in his head clear as day; the way it softens like butter when asking the hard questions to some poor woman left widowed by the monster of the week, or the way it climbs high when Dean says something he finds particularly stupid, or how passionately off-key he sings in the shower when he thinks no one is around to hear.  
  
Sam hasn’t been able to talk in 42 days and no one has any clue why. It wasn’t so bad, at first. Better to lose your voice than your life, but living as a mute is clearly starting to grate on Sammy. It’s like he’s burrowing further and further into himself, gazing listlessly out the car window, barely meeting anyone’s eye.  
  
Sam sips his beer and scribbles something down onto his notepad; possibly one of the most impressive displays of multitasking Dean has ever witnessed. He holds the pad out for Dean to read.  
  
_Going to the store. Need anything?_  
  
Dean doubts Sam needs anything at the store, most likely he just wants any excuse to get out of the house and away from Dean’s worried glance. Dean, as much as he hates to admit it, is a little pleased to have a break from Sam and his silence, the heavy weight that’s hanging between them. Hell is coming for Dean and Sam can’t speak, and Jesus Christ when did things get so messed up?  
  
Dean plays along and asks Sam to get a six pack. Once he hears the Impala’s rusty engine rumble to life and purr all the way out of earshot, Dean heads upstairs to wash the smell of damp out of his hair.

Dean didn’t know then that Sam wouldn’t come back from the store, that he wouldn’t see Sam again for a long, long time. If he had, he’d never have given Sam the keys, never would have let him drive off, never would have let him out of his sight.  
  


* * *

  
Dean is alone when the hellhounds come for him.  
  
The day he dies Dean is out in the middle of nowhere following the smallest thread of a lead on Sam’s whereabouts. Hell had been burning at the back of his mind for 365 days but the constant thoughts of Sam are a furnace compared to hell’s flickering. Like every other lead he’s grabbed a hold of, this one unravels and tangles into a useless mess.  
  
“I can’t,” Bobby says, barely three hours before the clock strikes midnight and the hellhounds come for Dean. “I can’t lose you both.”  
  
Dean hugs him tight, knowing it’s the last comfort he’ll ever receive. He smiles because he knows he’ll cry if he doesn’t. “He’s out there, Bobby. I know he is. Find him. Please.”  
  
He leaves Bobby, then. He doesn’t want the old man to witness what’s about to happen, doesn’t want to put the only family he has left in danger.  
  
In the end, Dean stops driving, pulls off onto the side of the road and puts in the first tape he finds; Stix’s _Renegade_ comes roaring to life from the stereo. He grins. If there’s a God out there, he has a sick sense of humour.  
  
He hears them before he sees them. The first howl echoes over the fields the moment Dean’s watch signals midnight and he gets out of the car to greet death, trying his hardest to ignore his shaking hands.  
  
There’s nowhere to run, there’s no one to save him. Right before the first of them sinks its teeth into his thigh, Dean thinks, _Sam, if you’re dead…_ but the thought ends before it starts because Sam being dead and his deal being for nothing makes it more unbearable than it already was.  
  
The beasts are worse than the dogs that visited him in his nightmares for the past twelve months; legs too long, paws that look more like talons and a tail like a snake. But the teeth… God. They go into him like knives through meat, easy as carving a turkey. Their mouths stretch wide, jaws unhinged to reveal endless rows of canines. They slice him up, shred him into bitesize snacks, and through all that agony and the rising heat of hell reaching out to claim him Dean thinks only of his little brother.  
  


* * *

  
Four months (Forty years) go by so slowly that time almost stands still and when Dean is yanked out of the flames by an angel (a fucking _angel_) and his soul is slipped neatly into a brand new body (“Sorry, boy, I had to salt and burn you,” Bobby told him) Sam still hasn’t been seen or heard from by anyone.  
  
“You’re an angel,” Dean yells. He and Castiel have had this same exact conversation many times, it’s a rehearsed play at this point. “You’re the motherfucking Jesus squad and you’re telling me you can’t find Sammy?”  
  
“I never said we couldn’t,” Cas says. This is new, he’s gone off-script.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I said, we never said we couldn’t find your brother. Dean, it is not in my orders to find your brother. He isn’t our concern.”  
  
“You mean you haven’t even tried?”  
  
“Lilith is breaking the seals. One lost human isn’t a priority,” Cas replies coldly.  
  
Dean loses it, then. “I swear I will pluck out your feathers one by one and stuff them into your mouth! I will ram that goddamn halo of yours right up your –“  
  
Cas, as usual, flies the fuck off whenever he grows tired of Dean. For lack of any angels for him to break his knuckles on, he hurls his empty liquor glass across the room, the scatter of each shining piece as it rains down to Bobby’s wooden floor is only momentarily satisfying for Dean.  
  
He hasn’t seen his brother in more than forty years. Sam went out to grab a pack of beer and he never came back. They’d found the Impala not long after the search for Sammy had begun. She was parked outside the convenience store, the keys dangling in the door’s lock. No sign of Sam, however, not even the kid behind the cash register could remember a tall, quiet guy set foot in the store. He did, however, remember a mugging had taken place in the alley out back that night but no, sir, the dude in the photo Dean shoved in his face was not familiar.  
  
Sam, to put it simply, had vanished.  
  
“Do you think he’s still alive?” Dean asked Bobby one evening. It’s a few weeks after he’d been dragged out of hell and Dean dedicates his time to filling himself up with whiskey.  
  
“I don’t know,” Bobby admits. “Something tells me he’s alive. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling.”  
  
“Yeah,” Dean agrees, because he would know if Sam were dead. He would feel it like he felt the hellhounds rip his chest open and empty it out. “I think he’s alive, too.”  
  


* * *

  
Ruby visits him in January, four months after hell. For Dean, now, there’s only before hell, during and after; before feels more and more distant each day, like it was someone else’s life, or a movie he vaguely remembers watching on TV once upon a time. The worst part is that sometimes Sam doesn’t even feel real.  
  
“You look like shit,” Ruby greets. She turns up out back in Bobby’s shop, leaning against the shell of a Cadillac. She’s wearing a redhead, now. She’s a pretty little thing with freckles.  
  
“Who’s the girl?” Dean asks.  
  
Ruby shrugs. “Some college girl,” she replies dismissively. “I’d heard they plucked you out, lucky thing.”  
  
Dean sighs. “Do you want something?”  
  
“I’d been meaning to come talk to you for a while but the angels have gone all Big Brother on you. I wanted to know if you’d heard about Sam.”  
  
Dean’s heart starts to thunder away in his chest and he gets up real close to Ruby, shoves her roughly against the hood of the car. She’s tinier than she was in the last vessel but the look in her eyes give no doubts that she could beat his ass just as easily as she did before.  
  
“What did you say?” Dean growls.  
  
“Sam,” she says. “I heard through the grapevine that he’s been spotted at some abandoned truck stop somewhere out west. Virginia, I think it was. Rumours are rumours, but I’d say it’s worth checking out, huh?”  
  
“Why the fuck did you come to me with this? Out of the goodness of your own heart?” Dean spits. He’s trying so hard not to get his hopes up but damn if they aren’t higher than the Empire State Building.  
  
She slips out from where he’s pinned her against the hood of the car and kicks a stone across the yard to where it bounces off a tire. “Because I’m not like the others, I’ve told you,” she replies softly. “You can hate me all you want but that doesn’t change the fact that I care about Sam. I was looking for him while you were downstairs but it was like he’d wandered off the face of the earth.”  
  
“You really expect me to trust you?” Dean scoffs. “I don’t even trust you as far as I could throw you. Sam disappears almost a year ago and I don’t hear a peep out of you until now when you suddenly have information on where Sam might be? You must think I’m dumber than a dingo, darlin’.”  
  
Ruby stares at him, the corner of her mouth tugs upwards revealing a dimple in her left cheek. “I just came by to let you know what I’d heard. Do what you want with it, Dean, but I think we both know you’ll be on the road heading west in under an hour.”  
  
She blinks out of sight and Dean kicks the hood of the Cadillac. He’s not sure if he’s more pissed about her claiming to care about Sam or the fact that she’s totally right about him. He fills the Impala up with gas and is on the road within thirty minutes.  
  


* * *

  
The road doesn’t end. He’s been walking for so long he’s sure the soles of his feet have been scraped to the bone; they drag, blisters blossoming all over, and it feels like the sun is inching closer and closer each second. His knees hit the ground, scraping the skin, and he finds that he can’t get back up. He lays down, lets the dusty roadside pillow his head, and he closes his eyes.  
  
His lips are dry and cracked; he can taste blood on his tongue. He feels like he’s sinking, swallowed up by the ground, but he’s happy to bury himself here and sleep for as long as he needs. When something shakes him, rough hands brushing over his forehead, he wants to turn away and go back to that dark someplace he was only a moment ago.  
  
“Hey, can you hear me?” a gravelly voice asks. The hand pats his cheek gently and he can smell cigarettes. “Come on, open your eyes.”  
  
He doesn’t want to but the voice won’t stop asking so he peels one eye open. It’s bright, the figure in front of him is only a shadow. Only once he manages to open his second eye does he see the man; middle-aged with a thick moustache and a pair of sunglasses resting on a large nose. He slips the glasses off and looks down at him with dark brown eyes.  
  
“You with me?”  
  
It hurts, everything hurts, but he finds it in himself to nod.  
  
“Thank God. Can you tell me your name?”  
  
He opens his mouth and tries to say something but all he manages is a croak. His throat stings, his tongue feels rough as sandpaper.  
  
“Okay. That’s okay,” the man reassures. “I’m going to try get you up to my truck and we’ll drive down to the hospital, alright?”  
  
The ground rises and falls, his legs melt, but the grip around his middle is strong and hauls him upright. The sun taunts him, lounging in a cloudless blue sky, and he folds as his chest heaves. Fire rises from his belly and sears through his throat. Vomit splashes his bare feet and his mouth is left tasting sour. He receives soft words, barely mumbling to his ears.  
  
Time slips, he hops from one scene to the next; from dusty roadside to the passenger side of a truck. The feel of leather against his back and cool press of glass against his forehead is a comfort.  
  
“How you doing over there, son?” the man behind the wheel asks.  
  
_How am I doing? I’m sore in places I didn’t know could be sore, I’m starving and thirsty, I think I might throw up any second and I have no idea where I am or how I got here._ He answers by lifting his shoulders and even the simple motion uses up a good chunk of his energy reserves.  
  
“Think you can tell me your name?”  
  
He opens his mouth, runs his parched tongue over his gritty teeth, and speaks for the first time in a long time. His voice is a husk of its former self, barely a whisper.  
  
“Sam. My name is Sam.”

* * *

  
In the end, Dean doesn’t need to go on a wild goose chase to find his brother. After forty years in hell and several months of Sam having his face splashed on milk cartons, in the end they don’t have to make any deals or kill any demons. Bobby gets the call on a Wednesday afternoon while he’s assembling himself a sandwich to eat at his desk, but his lunch is left abandoned on the counter because the first thing Bobby does when he hangs up the phone is call Dean.  
  
“Sam’s in a hospital in West Virginia,” is the first thing Bobby says.  
  
Dean, who’s been driving down route 20, halfway through Texas, nearly skids into the wrong lane. The impala swerves off to the side of the road, earning himself a chorus of angry car horns from behind, but Dean doesn’t care. He grips the steering wheel to tether himself, as if at any moment he might float away from this dream. But it’s not a dream, Bobby’s voice at the end of the line is as real as the rush of cars hurtling by.  
  
“Sam?” Dean says, because that’s the only thing that makes sense right now.  
  
“I just got the call, apparently he gave my number. Next of kin and all that.”  
  
Dean can’t speak. He holds onto the wheel with one hand, his cell pressed against his ear with his other hand. For the first time since he got back, he can’t hear the screams, can’t feel the melting heat or smell the stench of sulphur. Sam’s alive and not even hell can keep him from smiling like a maniac as he starts Baby’s engine back up and guides her back onto the road.  
  


* * *

  
Sam’s half of what he was when Dean last saw him. He’s skinny, so much so that his eyes seem to sink in their sockets, his cheekbones are sharp and his chest seems so fragile as it rises and falls under his hospital gown. Dean lingers in the doorway; Sam is sleeping and Dean just wants to look at him because Sam’s face is something he hasn’t seen in so long, something he thought he may never see again.  
  
Malnourished and dehydrated, the doctor had told him. Some scrapes here and there, blisters on his feet and cracks in his lips, but other than that he’s completely fine – physically, that is. What Sam was doing wandering bare-footed along some backroads in the middle of nowhere, no one knows. Dean finally steps into the room, boots squeaking against the linoleum floors. He sits down in the only chair in the room; a hideous faux leather and plastic thing in an unnatural green.  
  
Dean glances at the door and finds the hallway outside empty. He runs through the usual tests; a splash of holy water on Sam’s hand, a sprinkling of salt on his skin, and lastly the nick of a silver knife.  
  
Sam’s head rolls slightly on the pillow, towards Dean, he peels open a single blood-shot eye. They stare at each other for a moment and by the way Sam’s pupil is blown he reckons Sam isn’t quite in the room yet. Dean glances down at the cut he just opened on Sam’s palm. It weeps a trickle of red but the skin doesn’t sizzle. Dean allows himself to breathe.  
  
“Am I dead?” Sam asks. Dean has to lean close to hear his worn-out voice.  
  
“What? No, Sammy, you’re in the hospital.”  
  
Sam’s face remains dull and lax, no doubt 99% of him is mostly asleep with all the drugs he’s soaking up through the IV.  
  
“I got out of hell. I’m here, I really am,” Dean explains. “It’s a long story, I’ll tell you when you’re not so high. Then, you can tell me where you’ve been, and how you got your voice back.”  
  
Sam blinks, so slowly that for a moment Dean thinks he’s passed out again. “It’s a long story,” he replies and his lips tug into a lazy smile. He reaches out blindly to pat Dean’s arm but goes a few inches too far to the right. Dean grabs his hand and gently places back onto the bed.  
  
“Are you okay?” Sam asks, voice droopy like melted marshmallow.  
  
“I’m fine. You’re the one in the hospital bed.”  
  
“And you’re the one who went to hell.”

* * *

When they’re back in Sioux Falls a week later it’s almost like the past year was a dream, the kind of dream that shocks you awake and leaves you curled up and shivering in a pool over your own sweat. Bobby stares at the two of them when he opens the door, and then Sam is pulled into a crushing hug which squeezes the breath out of him.  
  
“Careful, he’s still delicate,” Dean warns.  
  
“Sorry,” Bobby says to Sam, letting him go and patting him gently on the shoulder. “My God, Sam, I thought I’d never see you again.”  
  
Sam’s head is ducked, his eyes on his boots. “Yeah, I thought so, too,” he replies quietly. Then, a little louder, “Could I get something to eat? I’m starving.”  
  
Bobby, domestic goddess that he is, sets about cooking up steaks and potatoes while Sam crashes on the couch. He still looks like a twig, skinny and brittle, but there’s colour in his face again and he isn’t breathing like there’s a rattle in his chest anymore. Dean slides the door between the study and the kitchen closed and grabs himself a beer.  
  
“Where was he?” Bobby asks, cracking pepper over a slab of raw meat.  
  
“I don’t know. I figured I’d give him some time, let him get back on his feet. Bobby, man, you should have seen him in the hospital. I barely recognised him at first.”  
  
“Yeah, he ain’t exactly looking like he could go running any marathons. I noticed he’s talking, too.”  
  
“I don’t know about that, either.”  
  
“You think he’ll tell you about it?” Bobby asks.  
  
Dean frowns. “Sure, why wouldn’t he?”  
  
“Are you going to tell him about hell?”  
  
_No_, Dean thinks. _Not if I can help it._

* * *

  
Ruby, the pest that she is, makes an unwelcome visit a few days later. She’s still sitting snugly in that vessel of hers; all rolling waves of red hair and creamy white skin. Her face lights up when she sees Sam and Dean tries not to think of a cat gazing wide-eyed at a mouse.  
  
“It’s good to see you,” she says to Sam.  
  
Sam half smiles. “Thanks.”  
  
“Where have you been?” she asks. Dean’s ears prick up, then, because this is something he’d really like to hear, too. The Vanishing of Sam Winchester is a mystery no one has yet solved.  
  
“Does it matter?” Sam asks. “I’m back now.”  
  
“I guess not,” Ruby replies with a shrug. “I’m guessing Dean gave you the run down. God and Angels and the Devil and all that.”  
  
“Yeah, he might have mentioned it.”  
  
“That’s why I’m here, Sam,” she says, stepping closer. She barely reaches his chest in her new body. She gazes up at him, voice cotton-soft as she says, “You can stop it.”  
  
Sam nods down at her and slowly reaches for Ruby’s ancient knife that’s been lying on Bobby’s, half polished.  
  
Ruby smirks. “That’ll just piss Lilith off,” she says.  
  
“I know,” Sam answers. Dean isn’t entirely aware of what’s happened until Ruby gasps. Sam has her skewered on the end of the knife, it’s lodged right between her ribs. Her eyes are wide with surprise and Dean reckons his look much the same. Sam twists the knife and Dean watches Ruby fizzle out, flashes like lightning under her skin.  
  
Sam pulls the knife free; grabs hold of the redhead’s body and lowers her gently to the ground. His expression turns mournful as he looks at the dead girl and he wipes a drop of blood from her lips.  
  
Dean stares at the scene, mouth hanging open. “Not that I was ever against gutting that bitch,” he says, “but what the hell was that?”  
  
“She had to die,” is all Sam says.  
  
“Yeah, I’m not arguing with that but….” But what? Dean isn’t entirely sure. “I guess it was just surprising. You were so against me shooting her, before.”  
  
“Exactly,” Sam agrees. “Before.” He gets to his feet and grabs a cloth to wipe the blood from his fingers. “We should bury her. She’ll start to smell.”

* * *

  
Sam is different. Not different in the we-need-to-perform-an-exorcism-immediately sort of way. He’s different in the sense that he isn’t exactly the same Sam Dean last saw a year ago. But, then again, Dean is probably not the Dean he was before, either.  
  
Still, something about Sam has the hairs on Dean’s arms stand to attention. His gaze drifts off into space fairly often and when he snaps back into the room and Dean asks what’s wrong Sam just shrugs and says, “I was just thinking.” About what? Sam never says.  
  
There’s something about his eyes, too. They’re the same mishmash of colours they were before, green-blue with amber ringed around his pupils, but they seem older, somehow, or even worse, like they belonged to someone else, once. Dean isn’t sure how to explain it even to himself. Perhaps the closest he can get is that there’s something otherworldly about them.  
  
When Cas finally shows his face, they’re in a motel out in Arizona hunting something that’s been munching on cattle. He stares at Sam for a long time before Sam sticks his hand out, all polite like he’s at a job interview.  
  
It takes a long moment before Cas takes Sam’s hand in his, swallows him up in those crystal blue eyes of his and says, “It’s good to have you back, Sam. I must say, none of us in heaven thought you would come back.”  
  
Sam slips his hand out of Cas’s. “Well, you didn’t really try looking,” he says. And Dean freezes because he can’t remember telling Sam that part when he gave him the angel talk.  
  
Sam, Dean knows, used to pray every day for a long, long time. Faith was always something that came easily to him but now Dean’s not so sure that faith is holding as strong as it was. He watches Sam and Cas stare at each other like they’re having a contest or, more likely, they’re having a conversation that Dean isn’t privy to.  
  
Suddenly, Sam says, “You know God left a long time ago, right?”  
  
Dean’s never seen Cas look genuinely surprised, until now. Despite being a good few inches shorter than Sam he somehow manages to tower over him. The shadows in the room stretch to fill the room and Dean swears that for a second he sees the outline of wings against Castiel’s back. Despite being backed into a corner by a damn angel, Sam doesn’t even blink.  
  
“You have no right to speak of God,” Cas growls, “or to presume to know him.”  
  
Sam smiles at Cas pityingly. “Do _you_ know God, Castiel?”  
  
The room is filled once again with the light from the overhead lamp, everything cast in bright yellow. Castiel is gone and Sam straightens out his sleeves like he’d just been hit by a stiff breeze. “Shall we head out, then?” he asks Dean.  
  
Dean’s mouth hangs open like he’s a goldfish and when he finally manages to say something his words come out an octave higher than usual, “What the hell was that?”  
  
Sam blinks at him. “What was what?”  
  
“What do you mean, what was what?” Dean barks. “What was with you being all cryptic and telling an angel that God doesn’t exist?”  
  
“I didn’t say God doesn’t exist,” Sam replies. “I said he’s been gone for a long time.”  
  
“And how would you know that, Sam?” Dean asks. He’s trying really hard not to yell, he really is.  
  
Sam frowns at Dean like it’s the dumbest question he’s ever heard. “There are things much older than Castiel’s God, Dean.”  
  
Dean is suddenly overcome by the feeling of the ground crumbling away beneath his feet. He’s standing in a room with a stranger.  
  
“What the hell are you?” Dean demands, hand reaching automatically for where his gun is usually strapped to the back of his belt. It’s not there, of course, it’s lying on the coffee table on the other side of the room along with all their cleaning equipment.  
  
“Dean, I’m me,” Sam says. He sighs and takes a seat at the edge of his neatly made bed. “You tested me yourself. And don’t you think Castiel would know if I weren’t really your brother?”  
  
“Where were you?” Dean demands. “I’ve not asked about it but I think I have a right to know. You just vanish right before my deal is due, no one hears you for _months_ and then you just turn up in the middle of nowhere? Now you’re saying weird shit and… and… I don’t know, man. You’re different.”  
  
“So are you,” Sam counters. “Hell changed you. It’s understandable.”  
  
“Are you going to tell me where you were?”  
  
Sam folds his hands on his lap and stares at them. “I suppose,” he says. “It’s complicated, though, you won’t understand it all.”  
  
Dean folds his arms over his chest. “Try me.”  
  
“Dean, I chose not to talk,” Sam begins. “Nothing took my voice or anything, I just stopped speaking because I had to. And I should have kept my mouth shut.”  
  
“What? Sam, I don’t understand.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. Look, when your deal was coming due, I got desperate. I would have done anything to save you. Well, I found a way. The thing… it doesn’t have a name that we can pronounce, but it made me an offer. _Forever hold your tongue and that which is most precious to you will remain unharmed_, it kind of liked the dramatic, I think, but you get the gist.”  
  
“You made a deal?” Dean cuts in. “A deal, Sam. After everything… Jesus.”  
  
“Yes, I made a deal. You made a deal and so did I, you don’t get to be mad at me about it,” Sam snaps. “I wasn’t selling my soul, and the price seemed easy enough for me to pay. I just had to never speak again and you would be okay.”  
  
“This… thing, what would it get from you shutting up for eternity?”  
  
Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. Thing is, there was a price if I broke the deal. If I said even one word, the deal was off and It said It would come for me.”  
  
Dean has to sit down. His legs feel like jelly as he lowers himself into a creaky armchair. “Sam, this is nuts. What even was this thing?”  
  
“I don’t know, but It’s much older than the angels. It talked about God like he was some kid throwing a tantrum. I guess the best way to explain It is; God created everything, but what created God? There’s so much out there we can’t even comprehend, Dean. Other universes, planets and the Gods that built them. But none of that really matters right now.”  
  
Dean can see now what it is that’s hiding in Sam’s eyes, the thing that makes him look so different. Sam has _seen_ things not even angels can understand. Dean lets out a deep breath only after his lungs begin to ache from being held still for so long.  
  
“It was stupid, really, but that night I went to the store there was someone being mugged in the alley behind. It just kind of slipped out. I don’t remember what I shouted but it was too late. I’d fucked up and I’m so, so sorry.”  
  
Dean doesn’t know what say, doesn’t know if he can say anything at all.  
  
Sam continues, “It came for me then and there. I can’t really explain what happened after, I don’t think there are words in any human language. It knew things, Dean, about me and you and… everything.” He pauses and it’s only then that Dean realises Sam is crying. “It told me things. Things that… fuck. My head is so full, man, it feels like it’ll split open. I think it knew that all that it was all too much for me but it told me anyway. I think it was my punishment, I don’t know. The worst of it was when it told me what was happening to you in Hell.”  
  
Cold creeps across Dean’s body and he tries and fails not to think about all those souls he tore into, all the times he laughed as he did. “Sam,” Dean finally says. “If this is true…”  
  
“It is true,” Sam snaps.  
  
“Right. I just… it’s kind of wild, you know?”  
  
Sam laughs, wet and breathless, nodding in agreement.  
  
“Why do you think it came to you?” Dean asks. “If this thing is like some mega-super God or whatever.”  
  
Sam shrugs and wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “It said I was important, that the future of the world depends on me. And you. I think it hated God, you know, the way it talked about Him. And I understand why. Dean, God is a monster.”  
  
Dean shudders, feeling as if a thousand eyes are trained on his back. Big Brother, that’s what Ruby had called the angels. “You’re talking about this thing like it’s the good guy,” he says to Sam.  
  
“It’s not good or bad, I don’t think,” Sam explains. “It just is. I know it’s hard to understand, Dean, but the one think I know for sure is we should be careful trusting the angels. They aren’t what they pretend to be.”  
  
Dean squeezes his eyes closed because he needs a moment to shut himself away from the crazy that is this conversation. When he opens his eyes, Sam is looking at him with the same gaze his eight-year-old self often wore, the kind that can melt anyone into a puddle. Insane interdimensional experience or whatever the fuck it was, Sam is still Dean’s little brother.  
  
“Sam,” Dean says. “I can’t trust this thing that did this to you.”  
  
“But can you trust me?” Sam asks.  
  
Sam, who made a crazy deal with something bigger than a god for Dean, who followed Dean barely three years ago on the hunt to find a father he hadn’t spoken to in years, who always went to Dean, not their dad, when some kid at school was picking on him. Does Dean trust Sam?  
  
“To hell and back, Sammy.”


End file.
